


Living is a Problem Because Everything Dies

by Weasleywasborninabin



Series: Rose/12 AU series [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:39:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2303534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weasleywasborninabin/pseuds/Weasleywasborninabin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose had often thought about what she would say to the Doctor if she ever saw him again</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living is a Problem Because Everything Dies

**Author's Note:**

> I know the immortal Rose thing is really overdone but I don't caaare :P  
> Yeah, there are things about this fic that don't work in the DW universe but it probably still makes more sense than a Moffat episode...! ;)

Rose had often thought about what she would say to the Doctor if she ever saw him again, but every time she was forced to settle on the fact that she would never know, as she couldn't decide without meeting him, and that was yet to happen (and probably never would happen). Even _if_ she found him again after all this time, she thought, he wouldn't be _her_ Doctor anymore. Would he even still remember her?

-  
  
Rose had gone to Cardiff to visit Jack when she had first ended up in her original universe, only to find that Torchwood had disbanded long ago after a huge explosion during some 'national crisis' involving aliens, in which the Doctor had not been around to help. But despite the fact that Jack - nor any of the other members of Torchwood 3 for that matter - were left in Cardiff, Rose stayed there. Maybe it was because the place was familiar to her having spent a lot of time there when travelling, or maybe it was because she thought that one day she could end up in the right place at the right time and see the Doctor again.  
  
-  
  
In 2011 Rose hears rumours of strange metal mice at a shopping centre in Colchester, but by the time she arrives to investigate she is told that the strange man in the long coat and his companion have already sorted it out. She tries not to cry in front of the friendly cashier as she thanks her for her help, but she knows she does a poor job of hiding her disappointment.  
  
Rose travels to London for the Olympic torch ceremony in 2012, just to see her Doctor. She wears sunglasses and a hoodie the whole time, but she still worries he might notice her, so she keeps her distance; she knows the rules of time travel. Seeing him and her past self, together, so happy, and knowing what will happen so soon after makes it all very bitter-sweet. She cries for days afterwards, but if she ends up never meeting him again it was worth all the pain just to see her Doctor one last time.  
  
For a few years all Rose hears are whispers, nothing worth following up, then one day in 2020 she reads an article in the paper about a drilling company in Cwmtaff and some strange goings on with dead bodies going missing… She leaves that day to investigate, but by the time she gets there there is nothing, except for rumours of a bouncy, floppy haired man in a bow tie who saved the village from lizard people, and Rose knows that once again she is too late.  
  
Years pass and she hears nothing, not even whispers. She is miserable and resigns herself to a normal life; she gets a job, rents a flat… She knows she can’t stay in one place for long but tries to make the best of what she has. Still hoping that one day she will see the Doctor again, but no longer waking every day with the determination to find him that she had for the previous few years, Rose cannot even bring herself to search the papers or the web for him, not wanting to give herself false hope… Not knowing if she could take yet another disappointment.  
  
-  
  
It’s a quiet and particularly cold winter’s day in 2031 when it finally happens. Rose hears the noise of the engine from the cafe she works in across the bay and immediately drops everything and runs. A million thoughts are running through her mind as she sprints along the quay, towards the noise of the TARDIS; What if it’s _him?_ What if it’s _not_ him? What should she say? What if he’s found someone else? And the worst and by far the most prominent question of all, _'what if he doesn’t remember me?'_ . As the TARDIS comes into view Rose slows her pace to a walk, coming to a stop by the entrance of a Tesco Express a few meters away from the ship, thinking she could duck inside if necessary.  
  
The door opens and Rose can feel her heart beating faster and faster - she knows if the Doctor is anywhere in his timeline up until the moment when she leaves for the last time she will not be able to speak to him - but the man who walks out the door is not the Doctor she knew and loved, it is a man she has never set eyes on before… Yet there is still something familiar about him. His hair is short and grey and he looks older than the other incarnations of him Rose knew, but it is still undeniably him.  
  
The man - the Doctor - looks up, and for a moment he freezes at the sight before him. His jaw drops slightly and he blinks a few times as if trying to confirm that what he’s seeing is real, before he jumps into action. He strides towards Rose and stops just a couple of feet away, glaring at her - and this Doctor's glare is even more fierce than either of her others’.  
  
"What are you then?” He asks in a thick Scottish accent, “Zygon? Some sort of ganger?” It doesn’t seem like he really expects to get an answer as he just continues talking angrily without even giving Rose the chance to say anything in reply, "But what are you doing here? And why would you pick her to impersonate? How would you even know about her? It's been years..." He trails off and pulls his sonic screwdriver and another contraption out from the inside pocket of his dark jacket, “Well a simple scan should tell me what you are. Good job I decided to keep this old thing,” He points the device at Rose’s face and turns it on, “It won’t hurt, but I wouldn’t try to move,” The Doctor advises her before beginning to scan her slowly from head to toe with the strange device. Rose waits patiently for the scan to finish, wondering what she should say, wondering what _he_ will say when he realises.  
  
The machine lets off a small _‘bing!’_ and the Doctor looks at the screen. He frowns (more than he was already), he presses a few buttons, he hits the device a couple of times in a way that he clearly thinks will fix it, before he eventually looks up at Rose, confusion in his eyes.  
  
“But you can't be real,” he says softly, his voice shaking, "You just can't be. How are you here?" he presses his hand gently to Rose's shoulder as if checking to see if she really is real, “…Rose?”  
  
And that confirmation that he still remembers her is enough to make Rose almost break down in tears, but she holds herself together and replies quietly, “Yeah, Doctor, it’s me.”  
  
The Doctor merely gapes at her slightly for a few seconds before he manages a quiet, “How?”  
  
"I don't think this is quite the place to discuss it, do you?" Rose replies, glancing at the TARDIS. Oh, how she longed to be back inside that glorious ship, but now was not the time; they needed to talk without distractions.  
  
"Yes, of course, of course." The Doctor replies weakly, turning towards his ship.  
  
"We could go to my place," Rose suggests, "It's just around the corner actually.”  
  
The Doctor sighs but turns towards her again, nodding, "Lead the way then, Rose Tyler.” He commands, and Rose likes the way her name sounds on this new Doctor's tongue.  
  
They walk in silence to Rose’s flat. It’s in a nice area, very close to the bay but also close enough to walk into town. Rose unlocks the door and leads the Doctor into the living room, heading into the kitchen to boil the kettle.  
  
Once they are settled in, both with a steaming hot cup of tea, the Doctor breaks the silence, "Why are you here, Rose? No, that’s not the right question, is it? How? How are you here?”  
  
Rose is quiet for a second before she speaks, she’s had a lifetime to think about what she would tell him if this ever happened but suddenly her mind has gone blank. She’d felt so confident and sure of herself up until the moment he spoke her name, now she just feels lost and nervous in front of the Doctor, the man she’d spent her life searching for.  
  
After taking a moment to gather her thoughts Rose begins, “I- Well- I guess, first things first, I kept the dimension cannon, after you left me. I kept it. I thought it might come in handy someday I suppose... So yeah. Um, it probably would have been about 2011 in your time? I'm not sure, it's hard to remember... Time was different there. Anyway, these cracks started appearing in weird places, with, like, this light coming out of them. Our world's Torchwood were all over it. But yeah, a while after the first one appears I'm just sitting in my office and the dimension cannon starts going crazy, all this beeping and stuff, and the teleporter starts lighting up, like they used to when they were fully charged and I just think 'what the hell? It's now or never' and I give it a go and I end up here, basically.” Rose breathes deeply, she wanted to get everything she had to say out of the way. “Well, actually I ended up in Scotland and hitch-hiked my way down here, but I’ve been in Cardiff pretty much ever since.”  
  
"The cracks in the universe… I never thought they would effect your parallel dimension as well as this universe…” The Doctor thinks out loud, then his eyes narrow slightly, “But Rose, that was years ago… I mean - what year even is it? - that must've been at least twenty years ago... How did you end up here, now?" His eyes narrow even more, if that’s possible, “And why did you leave your universe? You had him, er…me, didn't you? Why did you leave him?”  
  
Rose had known this question was coming but that didn’t make it hurt any less, "I never would have left him. Never." She whispers, not meeting the Doctor’s eyes, “I loved him, more than anything in the world. And we were happy. For nineteen years we were happy; that’s longer than you and I ever had.”  
  
Somewhere at the back of The Doctor’s mind alarm bells begin to go off, he knows that there’s something strange about what Rose Tyler has just told him, but ignores it for now in favour of asking, as gently as possible, “What happened?”  
  
“He died.” Rose says simply, finally meeting the Doctor’s eyes.  
  
His mouth falls open in horror as he takes in what Rose has just told him. No wonder she wanted to get away after that happened.  
  
“All that talk of growing old together, you didn't think about the life we were gonna have; fighting aliens, working with Torchwood, protecting the world… He was killed. It was a- a Sycorax. He was killed while trying to protect me." Rose swore she wouldn't cry as she told the Doctor, but she could feel the tears threatening to fall. She takes a shuddering breath and lets her hair fall down to cover her face as she stares at her lap, avoiding the Doctor’s gaze.  
  
“Rose,” the Doctor murmurs, kneeling in front of her and resting his hand on top of hers, “I'm so, so sorry.”  
  
For a second he sounds like his old self again, and Rose looks up at him, tears glistening in her eyes, "His death was pointless. He didn't need to protect me. He should have saved himself like I told him to, he should have just left me and run. But he was so stubborn, like you always were. He should have just left me.” She’s sobbing now, and is barely even able to get a proper sentence out.  
  
The Doctor seems unsure of what to do and tentatively puts his arm around his old companion’s shoulders, "Don't say that Rose, he wouldn't have- _I_ wouldn't have ever just left you.” He can be cruel, manipulative at times, and yes, he has left people to die before ( _Is he even a good man? Who knows_ ). But the Doctor knows for a _fact_ that he would never have left Rose Tyler to die. He would _never_ , not even now, after all his changes.  
  
“No. You don't understand I- I couldn’t… They needed to pay. For what they did to him. To _my_ Doctor. They _had to pay_ … So I blew up their ship, Doctor. I blew it up and I killed everyone on board.”  
  
The Doctor is silent as he considers what Rose, his kind, compassionate Rose, has just told him. His previous incarnations would be angry - _furious!_ \- that someone he had trusted so much had done something so terrible (after all he had once condemned Harriet Jones for doing the same thing), but all he feels is guilt. He knows not only that he, however indirectly, was the cause of this, but that he has done things just as bad, far more recently, and for far less.  
  
“I was on that ship, Doctor.”  
  
The Doctor still does not speak, suddenly everything is clicking into place; what had she said before? Nineteen years with the other Doctor? No. That couldn’t be right…?  
  
“There's a reason I haven't aged since you last saw me.”  
  
“No,” the Doctor murmurs, as he pulls away to face Rose, panic and hurt and anger, so much anger, in his eyes. He grasps her shoulders, not being gentle anymore as the realisation of what has happened to _his_ Rose hits him, “No, Rose, please. Tell me it’s not what I think it is!”  
  
“I can't die, Doctor,” Rose confirms, looking him straight in the eye, “I’m like Jack.”  
  
“No.” He whispers, throwing his head into his hands, “No!” He cries, “I did this to you!” He stands and looks at Rose and she has never seen such fury in the Doctor’s eyes, not in the whole time she’d known him, “This is my fault.” He states, and Rose can tell this Doctor is dangerous, in ways unlike either of the others she had known, she cannot tell what he might do in this fit of rage.  
  
“It isn’t your fault.” Rose reassures him, placing her hand on his shoulder as he had done earlier to her. “Doctor, it’s no one’s fault but my own.”  
  
“How can you say that?!” He shouts, and Rose jumps back in shock, “After what I’ve turned you into? How can you not blame me for this?!” Rose can see tears forming in the man’s eyes and she moves towards him again, longing to comfort him, “I can’t cure you, you know? If that’s what you’ve come to me for… Jack came to me asking for a cure too, but there’s nothing I can do.”  
  
_Might as well come out with it,_ she thinks, _nothing left to lose,_ “I don’t want a cure, Doctor. I want… to go with you.”  
  
The Doctor’s eyes widen at the young woman’s words, he’d never thought he’d see her again and now she was asking to travel with him? Even after all these years the Doctor could not turn her down, he’d missed her more than he had cared to believe. But would it be better, better for her, to go on living without him? “I’m not the same man anymore, Rose.” He tells her carefully.  
  
Rose’s heart sinks, _he’s trying to let me down gently, but I’ll be damned if I don't put up a fight,_ “I know that. Do you really think I expected you to be the same? I’m not an idiot, Doctor. I knew you’d be different, I’ve had a long time to think about this.” She pauses before asking the question that’s been on her mind since she saw him walk out of the TARDIS, “How long’s it even been since you last saw me?”  
  
“1500 years or so…”  
  
Rose inhales sharply, _1500 years?_ She’d expected a few hundred at the most. No wonder he wasn’t eager to take her back, he’d probably moved on from that part of his life _centuries_ ago. “I’m surprised you even still remember me.” She mutters bitterly, all of a sudden too embarrassed to look the Doctor in the eye.  
  
“No.” The Doctor frowns, and steps closer to Rose, “No, don’t say that. I could never forget you, Rose Tyler. Never.” He lifts her chin so she is looking directly at him and smiles, gently stroking her cheek, and her heart melts.  
  
“I still love you.” She blurts out accidentally, breaking eye contact with the older man she adds quietly, “I don’t think I could ever stop loving you… No matter how much you change.”  
  
He frowns slightly, but doesn’t move his hand from her face, which Rose takes as a good sign, “That’s not a healthy attitude to have, Rose. I could have done anything in the last thousand years, you wouldn’t know.”  
  
Rose pulls away from him, “How much worse could what you’ve done be than what I did?” She replies sadly.  
  
She feels so ashamed about what she did; she wasn’t sure if she should tell the Doctor about it but she couldn’t bear the thought of lying to him, even if he thought less of her because of it.  
  
“I’ve made mistakes too… I’ve let people down.” He says, looking her straight in the eyes, “I don’t blame you for what you did; I understand.”  
  
Rose breathes a sigh of relief, she knows _her_ Doctor never would have agreed with it. She knows he would have been furious with her. But somehow she thinks this Doctor may have a better understanding of revenge than her Doctor had ever had.  
  
“But Rose, you have to know that I’m more different that you could imagine. You might not like me anymore once you get to know me.” It sounds clichéd and childish even to the Doctor and he cringes slightly at his own words, but continues all the same, “I don’t want to give you the chance to dislike me… I couldn’t stand that.”  
  
“That’s not gonna happen, Doctor.” Rose states. “Just give me a chance to get to know you again. Please? I’ve waited nearly fifty years to see you again.”  
  
He tries to resist her, to tell himself that she’d be better off without him - but would she really? Now that Jack was gone (god knows where) there was no one else like her, she’d spend eternity by herself, and he of all people knew what that felt like. He remembers a conversation he had had with Rose, many years before _‘You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That's the curse of the Time Lord…’_ He had acted like it wasn’t a big deal back then, but both of them had known that that wasn’t the case… Now he’s been given the chance to spend eternity with her and he’s prepared to turn that down? No. The Doctor knows he couldn’t stand to leave her, no point even considering it really.  
  
“And I’ve waited over a thousand years to see you again, Rose Tyler; I’m not letting you go now that I’ve found you.” Rose makes a strange sort of sob/squeal noise and launches herself forward to hug him tightly, “Oh!” He says in surprise, “I - um - I’m not really the hugging type anymore…” He trails off awkwardly before relaxing slightly in Rose’s arms, “But I suppose I can probably make an exception for you.” She smiles into his shoulder as he wraps his arms gently around her.  
  
-  
  
He helps Rose pack all of her, surprisingly few, possessions into a suitcase and a small backpack before she writes and sends emails to her landlady and workplace, “They’ve probably fired me after I ran out today, but it’s best to let them know I won’t be back…” She tells him, “I’ve already paid my rent for the next three months so that should all be okay…” She slings the bag over her shoulder and grabs her case, grinning. “Lead the way, Doctor.”  
  
-  
  
As they walk back to the TARDIS the Doctor slips his hand into Rose’s. She stiffens for a second and the Doctor is worried he might have made a mistake, but before he can pull away she gives his hand a gentle squeeze and they continue walking in comfortable silence.  
  
-  
  
“Welcome home, Rose Tyler.” The Doctor smiles, as they reach the TARDIS, striding forward and throwing open the door before beckoning for her to follow him inside.  
  
When Rose enters the ship she does a double take, “Oh. You’ve redecorated,” She comments, and the Doctor nods slightly, glancing towards his old companion, trying to gauge her reaction. “It's certainly...different. I like it.” She tells him with a stunning smile.  
  
He smiles widely back at her as he taps away on the control desk.

-

The Doctor may not know whether he’s a good man or not, but what he does know is this; despite what he’d told her - even after all these years and everything that has happened to him - he _is_ still in love with Rose Tyler, and probably will be for the rest of his lives.  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> I wrote this before the new season aired so apologies if you think 12 seems slightly OOC! Watched the first episode before finishing this so I could edit any bits in/out to make it fit his character, but I think I did an okay job... I am totally loving him so far!  
> Hope you enjoyed :)


End file.
